Stories

APL has forged a new partnership with the U.S. Space Force to evaluate ground systems being designed by the branch's Space Systems Command for a new classified satellite network. The Lab will help ensure the government is using best software and cybersecurity practices while prototyping and demonstrating the new ground system.

Last fall, the world watched as the DART spacecraft — the Double Asteroid Redirection Test — guided itself toward the asteroid Dimorphos for a direct collision, a major technical achievement and the first successful planetary defense test in history. Revisit DART's triumphant collision and the resulting year of science analysis and discoveries that followed.

NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) is embarking on its yearlong integration and testing campaign, during which all of the instruments and components will be added to the spacecraft structure, and tested to ensure they will survive the harsh environments of launch and space, and made ready to execute their mission.

Seven scientists and engineers who made NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission a smashing success last year recently had asteroids named after them.

NASA's Parker Solar Probe has now become the first spacecraft ever to fly through a powerful solar explosion near the Sun. Passing along and through a coronal mass ejection last September, Parker provided an unparalleled view into these stellar explosions and an opportunity to study them early in their evolution.

In 2022, NASA's Parker Solar Probe soared gracefully through one of the most powerful coronal mass ejections (CMEs) ever recorded — not only an impressive feat of engineering but a huge boon for the scientific community. Parker's journey through the CME is helping to prove a 20-year-old theory about the interaction of CMEs with interplanetary dust, with implications for space weather predictions.

APL's Communications Department received several social media and digital video awards for their work on the DART impact campaign.

APL team members on NASA's Europa Clipper mission recently picked up two NASA awards honoring their accomplishments building and delivering the spacecraft's propulsion module.

A group of U.S. Space Force faculty and the incoming inaugural cohort of Schriever and West Space Scholars toured APL on July 28 as a part of the Space Force's Professional Military Education program, an ongoing partnership between the Space Force and Johns Hopkins University.

NASA has selected an APL-led team to support the science mission of the first crewed landing of the agency's Artemis program to explore the Moon.